


All I Really Need to Know…

by ThereBeDragons



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Binge-watching TV, F/F, Fanfiction as Therapy, Frottage, How I Came to Love Femslash Too, M/M, Meditation on Life and Fanfiction, Meta, Mutual Masturbation, My Own Fanfiction Coming Out Story, Oral Sex, Perhaps a Plea for Help from Other Addicted Fangirls, Shameless Hawking of Unrelated Fiction, Though Johnlock Was My First Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-04-25 19:55:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14385990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThereBeDragons/pseuds/ThereBeDragons
Summary: ...I Learned from Sherlock Fanfiction.





	1. Sex (Part 1)

**Author's Note:**

> Here's what I should be doing, instead of starting a new AO3 piece:
> 
> \- Work. The paid kind, that is; the full-time day job that keeps this show running.  
> \- Parenting two kids. (One's in college now, but still requires a fair amount of parenting. And the other one's in high school, oy.)  
> \- Being a wife and partner.   
> \- Cleaning, shopping, carpooling, other errands: you know. Neither of us is exactly a 50s homemaker kind of a wife, so there's a lot of negotiation (read: arguing) about who's doing what and when.  
> \- Marketing for the NaNoWriMo novel I put on Kindle.  
> \- Formatting my full-length novel for Kindle.  
> \- Or maybe querying more literary agents. (Ugh. This makes my stomach hurt.)  
> \- Finishing the two Sherlock fanfics I already have up on AO3  
> \- Working on the new novel  
> \- Maybe having a life? (That one seems unlikely.)
> 
> Instead, however, the spirit moved me to start this…

Before fanfiction, I hadn’t ever thought much about how two men would have sex together. Why should I have? I hardly watch porn (my imagination is always so much better) and the kind of literary books I used to read rarely went into details. One exception was a brilliant, intellectual trilogy about World War I and poetry, love and death and the immortality of words. They were the kind of books I could have only read before having kids, back when I had all that time and focus and intelligence, back when my mind wasn’t fragmented with the schedules of multiple people and interrupted at five-minute intervals. (Maybe I can read that kind of book again when the kids are out of the house. Somehow I doubt it, though.)

Anyway, in the opening pages of one of those books—Pat Barker’s fantastic _An Eye in the Door_ (Penguin, 1993)—two British servicemen have a sexual encounter that seems less about eroticism than about class and power. One of them “…was thinking how impossible it is to sum up sex in terms of who stuffs what into where.” They end up having oral and anal sex, and the descriptions—though very roughly sketched out—at least gave me an image of what would happen between men in bed.

Fast forward to about four years ago, when our then-fourteen-year-old flopped down miserably at the dinner table and said, “I just finished watching the third season of _Sherlock_! And now it’s over, and it was soooo good, and it’s going to be ages and ages before they make any new ones, and I have no other shows that I love, and I’m soooo depressed.”

“ _Sherlock_? Not the Robert Downey, Jr., one?” my wife asked. “I’m not a huge fan.”

“What? No, Mom, that’s a movie. This is a TV show. Like, from England.”

“Victorian-era?” I asked. “Our annual _Downton Abbey_ marathon might be enough historical TV for me.”

My wife made a face. “That last season of _Downton_ was terrible. All the melodrama…”

“Oh, but it’s so pretty. The clothes…” I said wistfully. “And the British accents. You don’t even have to listen to what they’re saying.”

“Ohmygod, will you two shut up for one minute! _Sherlock_ is different. It’s set in modern London, like all the places we went last year. Well, not all the places, but there’s stuff at the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament and everything. It’s really good…”

So we watched the first episode. And loved it. In fact, we loved it so much we watched it again immediately afterwards, this time with the closed captioning on so we could catch all of the dialogue.

Our daughter said, “Isn’t it great? Wasn’t I right? I was right, I knew you’d love it!”

Me: “You were right, we love it. He’s fantastic. What’s his name? Benjamin something?”

Her: “Benedict. Benedict Cumberbatch.”

Me: “Wow, is that his real name? Would someone really give a child that name?”

Her: “You’ve seen him before. He was Kahn in the last _Star Trek_.”

Me: (Remembering) Ohh, sexy Kahn. With that voice. “He’s gorgeous.”

Her: (Making a face) “I think he looks like an alien. Or an insect.”

Me: “Shh, don’t insult my new boyfriend.” To my wife: “I’d totally jump the fence for him.”

Our daughter: “Ew, Mom, you’re so gross.”

We binge-watched all the Sherlock episodes we could. Then we watched them again, because we couldn’t believe there were _only nine episodes_. I looked up everything I could about him: Benedict, my new British Boyfriend. I watched clips of him dancing, and weird otter memes, and myriad interviews. The one that really started it all was on MTV News. Benedict was saying how “startlingly aware” he was about something he referred to as fanfiction. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he said it involved having things done to his body by Watson; and then he put down his coffee cup and - very discreetly - pantomimed fucking three fingers into the circled palm of his other hand. I think he also said the words _racy_ and _dirty_ , but I could hardly hear from the sound of all the blood in my body suddenly rushing down to my cunt. I watched that minute-and-a-half video clip seventeen times in a row, until I could mouth all the words along with him. I fucked my hand, the same way, too. God, his fingers. Then I opened a new tab in my browser and googled “Sherlock fanfiction.”

            Things I’ve learned so far about gay male sex:

  1. The critical significance of lube
  2. There are way more positions for anal sex than I’d ever imagined
  3. Fingers first, please (see 1 and 2)
  4. Prostate: wow. Who knew it was so important?
  5. Men do rub their penises together. I wondered about that.
  6. Though apparently most fanfiction is written by women, so maybe they’re just imagining it too.
  7. But it seems like a good idea, doesn’t it?
  8. It would be nice to have a penis, even just for a day, to try some of this. Just for a day. A penis or two. Or three. That would be kind of sexy, like the John/Sherlock/Lestrade stories.
  9. Do I have penis envy?
  10. Oh my god, maybe Freud was right!



 


	2. Sex (Part 2)

Here’s one of the first Johnlock pieces I wrote, sort of metafiction about my life:

 

I can’t sleep. I CAN’T SLEEP!

There’s a helicopter in my head, blades pulsing whump-whump-whump as I toss from side to side, my body stiff and tense. I beat the pillow. I flip it. I beat it again.

“Iz…” Evie says. She’s curled on her side, facing away from me.

“Sorry. Were you sleeping?”

“Almost. So please stop pounding on the pillows. Try to relax, okay? Do your deep yoga breathing…”

I lay back and tried. Inhale for five, hold for five, exhale for five. Inhale for five, hold for five, exhale for five. Inhale for five, hold for five, exhale for five. Aaaaa, my head still feels like it’s going to explode!

Okay, no meditation.

Next up, masturbation.

Night - running through scenarios in my head. Ah - Hound Episode. Moved their conversation from the common room to their (shared) room (how convenient). The room was warm - John shucked his jumper…

 

Sherlock - scared, hand shaking, losing his mind.

John grabbed Sherlock’s shaking hand and held it tight. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s all right, I’m here. You’re safe.”

Sherlock yanked his hand back. “No, I’m not! I’m not safe if I’m losing my mind!” His eyes filled with tears and he barely fought back the hysteria that was so close to the surface. “John, I can’t…I don’t…”

The pleading in his eyes was too much. John grabbed Sherlock’s face between his hands and kissed him.

Sherlock went completely still. 

John kissed softly at first, reassuring, gentle. He felt Sherlock’s body begin to relax, to respond, and so he deepened the kiss. Sherlock’s hands, which had been clenched at his sides, slid up and into John’s hair. Sherlock opened his mouth and moaned as John’s tongue touched his own.

That deep, desperate sound from Sherlock set John on fire. He moved his hands to Sherlock’s shoulders and pressed him against the door, pinning him back with his hands and his body. He could feel that Sherlock was already hard.

“Oh, Jesus,” John gasped. He buried his face in Sherlock’s neck and brushed his lips against the cool, white length of it. Sherlock shivered, moving his hands from John’s hair, slowly down his back, and finally to cup his arse. John groaned. “Sherlock, oh my God,” he breathed, looking up into those mesmerizing light eyes. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”

“You too?” Sherlock asked, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a smile. “Think of all the time we’ve wasted.”

John pulled Sherlock’s head down into another kiss, this time grinding his own erection into Sherlock’s leg. It wasn’t enough. He reached for Sherlock’s trousers and then his own, unbuttoning, unzipping, pulling their cocks free, trying to rub them together with one hand. It didn’t work - Sherlock was too tall. So John dropped to his knees, tugging Sherlock’s trousers to the ground.

“Oh, God!” Sherlock panted, tossing his head back. It cracked smartly against the door. “Ow!”

John chuckled. He ran his fingers over Sherlock’s cock, marveling at its smooth paleness, nestled against silky black pubes. It was longer than John’s own, he could tell, but - not that he was competitive or anything - John’s was thicker. This was going to be fun. He flicked his tongue over the tip, then circled, working his way up and down the shaft. Sherlock was muttering a string of oaths and prayers, and hearing Sherlock sounding completely incoherent fueled John’s resolve. Taking a deep breath, John opened wide and slid his mouth down the length of Sherlock’s cock. He couldn’t take it all, but he was close. He grabbed the base with his hand and started to pump with his mouth. It had been a long time.

“John, wait, wait,” Sherlock was pushing him off, pulling him back to his feet. His eyes were more like blue flames than like their usual ice. “Bed.”

John inhaled sharply. “Yes,” he said, kissing Sherlock again. “Have you…have you ever…?” He didn’t quite know how to frame the question.

Sherlock was kicking off his trousers, unbuttoning his shirt. John’s mouth went completely dry at the sight of him naked and erect. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Sherlock smiled at the look in John’s eyes and began to make quick work of John’s shirt.

“Yes,” Sherlock answered. “With a woman, once. At uni. It was not good. With men…boys, really, I should say…some fumblings at school…mutual masturbation, some attempts at oral sex. Nothing serious. It all seemed messy, superfluous. Not worth the effort of making a social connection…”

At this point he had the shirt off and was stroking John’s nipples. He bent his head to lick one and John made a noise like a whimper. Sherlock smiled again and kneeled to remove John’s trousers, stopping to admire the view. What a delicious sight.

“How about you?” Sherlock asked. “With men, I mean. That, before…it didn’t seem like you were a stranger to having a cock in your mouth…”

It took John a moment to remember how to speak, distracted as he was by the vision of Sherlock kneeling before him, that head of black curls, than mouth. He’d imagined it so many times it was difficult to believe this was finally real. “Um,” he said, waiting for the words to come back to him. “Um, not since my Army days. And never sober. But yes, I have done some of this before.” He stepped out of his trousers and watched as Sherlock rose again from the floor, so gorgeous, so graceful. John caught his breath. “But never,” John whispered, “Never with anyone I cared about like I care for you…”

They stumbled together to the bed, all lips and arms and legs, tumbling over together, rubbing against each other, touching and tasting. John felt like he was having an out-of-body experience. Sherlock felt his senses sharpen, his mind cataloguing the sensations: the stubble on John’s face rubbing his own cheek, the warmth and hardness of John’s cock against his stomach, the amazing, erotic noises John made as Sherlock stroked him up and down.

But John wasn’t ready to come like that. He rolled and pinned Sherlock down on the bed, sliding his knee between Sherlock’s thighs. Sherlock gasped, trying to catch his breath, and John kissed his neck again, his ears, his lips, his eyelids.

“I want you,” he breathed into Sherlock’s ear. “I want…”

“Yes,” Sherlock whispered. “Yes, yes, yes…”

John grinned and rolled off, padding over to his bag by the door. He unzipped a side compartment, fished around, and triumphantly held up a tube of lubricant.

Sherlock’s eyes grew wide. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t. I thought we’d have separate rooms and I’d be taking care of myself. I wish I’d known, though. Delayed gratification can be such a good thing…”

Sherlock laughed, sitting up enough to prop his head on his hand. “Delayed gratification, indeed. I’ve been waiting since the day I met you.”

John slid back next to Sherlock, kissing him again, raking his fingers through that luscious mop of hair. “It took me a little longer,” he admitted. “But I got there, just the same. Got here,” he corrected, slipping his hand down again to Sherlock’s cock.

“Mmmm…”

 

“Mmm, you’re rocking the bed,” Evie complained, rolling over. “What are you doing?”

I grabbed her hand and pushed it toward my crotch. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“Mmm, don’t you still have your period?” She didn’t say it like, “Mmmm, ohhh, don’t you still have your period, you naughty girl?” It was more like, “Ick, did you wake me up to make a mess of our nice clean sheets?” Amazing how many different ways you can say “Mmm.”

I slid my panties down to my ankles, my thoughts still with Sherlock and John. “My period’s almost done. Just help me out,” I said, spreading my knees wide for her, my fingers still on my clit.

With a sigh, Evie flopped over into a more comfortable position and pushed her fingers into me. She spoke, half-asleep, into the pillow, “Mmm, wet.”

Wet…

 

John and Sherlock were facing each other, ready and panting, John poised between Sherlock’s legs. John gently pulled his lubed fingers from Sherlock’s arse and asked, “Are you sure?”

“Oh, god, just fuck me already,” Sherlock hissed, grabbing John’s cock to guide it inside of him.

John was careful - oh, so careful - as he pushed his cock into Sherlock’s arse, millimeter by millimeter. Sherlock squirmed under him, gasping “Oh, yes, oh, John, oh, god!” Finally, John was balls-deep inside and he paused, catching his breath, waiting for Sherlock to get used to the sensation. Sherlock shut his eyes and saw the pictures in his brain flash by: the first time he saw John, at St. Bart’s; their first chase together, racing through the streets of London after that cab; John shooting the serial-killer, saving Sherlock’s life; the incident at the pool, when he thought he was going to lose John; and John and John and John…

Suddenly, achingly slowly, John started to move inside him, and the images in Sherlock’s mind emptied like water rushing down a drain. His eyes snapped open. In them, John saw…amazement. Abandon. Surrender.

John had to stop moving abruptly so he didn’t come just from that look. Sherlock wrapped his long legs more tightly around John. “Don’t stop! I need you…I need you. Move! Now!”

That made John throw his head back and laugh out loud. “Greedy bastard,” he said, starting a shallow thrusting again. “D’you like that? D’you like my cock sliding inside you? You’re so tight, Sherlock, so hot, so perfect…”

And he did look perfect, writhing under John, his own cock pressed between them, his hair a mess of curls and his full mouth opened but beyond speech. John pushed Sherlock’s hips up and angled himself down to thrust deeper. He could tell when he hit the right spot: Sherlock was making a noise now like a keening, or a howl, crying out in between, “Oh god, John, oh fuck, oh god, I’m…I’m…”

John grabbed Sherlock’s cock and with a few sharp pumps Sherlock came, spurting on their chests, Sherlock’s body flailing first up to John and then down to the bed. Sherlock lay shuddering through the aftershocks, then his hands flew up to grip John’s shoulders, pulling John in even deeper. “John, John, oh fuck,” Sherlock breathed, “Come for me now. Come _in_ me.”

So finally John let himself go, thrusting into Sherlock with a punishing rhythm: grinding, pumping, driving himself until he felt his scrotum tightening and the heat gathering and all the blood rushing from his head…and he gripped Sherlock’s hips tighter as he came and came and cried out…

 

…And I came with my fingers rubbing my clit and Evie’s fingers inside me, and I muffled my moans in the pillow…

 

…And John, finally finished pumping, finally spent, his breathing ragged, collapsed on Sherlock in a tangle of semen and sweat, kissing him, desperately kissing the man who had been his flatmate and his savior and was now his lover…

 

…And I relaxed into the bed, thinking, “Now, maybe I can get some sleep.”

Evie rolled over. “Were there three in the bed this time?” she asked, her voice dozy and thick.

“No, four,” I said. “You, me, John, and Sherlock. John was on top this time.”

“Nice. But poor Sherlock’s going to be sore tomorrow…”

 

“You’re going to be sore tomorrow,” John said ruefully, pulling out with care. Still, Sherlock whimpered slightly. “Sorry. I guess I lost my head.”

“John. Don’t you dare apologize.” Sherlock nestled his head onto John’s chest, ruffling the golden hair between his nipples. “That was…perfect. Miraculous.”

“Miraculous?” John grinned.

“Yes. Phenomenal. Extraordinary. Absolutely fucking mind-blowing.”

“I’m glad,” he said, kissing the top of Sherlock’s head, kissing those crazy black curls. “It was fucking mind-blowing for me, too.”

They lay together, sticky, happy, holding each other. Each lost in his own thoughts.

Sherlock broke the silence first. “So…your Army days?”

“Yeah. I guess there aren’t any heterosexuals in foxholes, either.”

A laugh rumbled in Sherlock’s chest. “Interesting.”

“Not nearly as interesting as you,” John said, running his fingers down Sherlock’s back to give his arse a squeeze. “So, a woman? When you were at uni?”

Sherlock pulled a face. “Never again. Really not my area. I don’t know how you can do it.”

“Don’t know that I will be, again,” John said slowly. “Not after this…miraculous…whatever it is we have…”

“Good,” Sherlock said. “That’s…very good. John?”

“Yes?”

“Can we do it again soon?”

 

I turned my pillow over to the cool side and nestled into it. Soon, I thought. Very soon. But sleep, first…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone else write fanfiction to work out their own issues? I'm guessing (hoping) I'm not alone in this...


	3. Sex (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because porn is better with penises.

My interest in fanfiction was innocent at first, really. The initial stories I found were sweet. There was a lot of texting, verbal play, some angst but it all worked out in the end. I didn’t realize that the site I was on was set for ratings K-T, Kids to Teens. I didn’t know how to bookmark anything, so I kept a list in the Notes app of my phone, called Authors, where I painstakingly copied down the names of the writers I liked on fanfiction.net.

What was my first M fic? It might have been Which Would It Be Tonight? by IShouldBeOverThis:

<https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6335033/1/Which-Would-It-Be-Tonight>

Wow. Dark Sherlock, with lots of past lovers, saying things like “Threesomes are distracting and more than three is messy.” I felt so guilty about the level of smuttiness that I couldn’t even write the title of the fic into my phone; I put in the title of one of her K+ fics and said to search from there.

Someone on fanfiction.net must have mentioned AO3. What was that? It only took a little searching and, OMG! It was a wonderland. An amazing, huge playground of Sherlock fanfiction. I was overwhelmed, and gorged on fanfics like I’d never read before. This was my first AO3 work, I think, and it’s not even rated E, but still SO GOOD:

34 Rules and Two Addendums: Not Gay, by [scuttlesworth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scuttlesworth/pseuds/scuttlesworth)

<https://archiveofourown.org/works/523304>

Do you remember what it was like to discover this universe? Maybe you were a teenager when you started consuming/producing fanfiction, but I’m John-era: when I was a kid I’d only vaguely heard about Kirk/Spock Zines, that was pretty much it for slash.

Maybe ten years ago a friend shared an amazing Hermione/Draco fic she’d written, and I thought, “Wow, this is great! But why bother writing with someone else’s characters?”

Huh.

After 34 Rules, I wandered around the Sherlock fandom and learned the lay of the land: How to access people’s bookmarks. How to search for pairings I liked (almost exclusively Sherlock/John). How to sort for fics that were rated Explicit.

I don’t know some of the vocabulary in the fanfiction, and sometimes made the mistake of googling rather than looking in the dictionary.

Intercrural sex: okay, that one wasn’t so bad: a man putting penis between his partner’s thighs; a kind of non-penetrating sex. The images on that one were mostly Greek vases, black figure, red figure. Sexy Greeks. Nice.

In the fanfiction there was also a lot of licking of frenulums. No idea what those were, so I googled them, too. AAH! MY EYES! BEING BURNED OUT OF MY HEAD! I clicked out of that one at lightning speed and erased my browser history. Clearly, this is how bad things happen on the Internet.

***

I was going through a rough patch then (family stuff), and spending a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms and bedsides. Going back to my journaling from that time, at first I was just relieved to find something that distracted me:

“Discovered fanfiction. Oh my. I hardly read anything else this summer, to my great embarrassment. I'm just so happy when I'm reading a great Johnlock story. It feels like they're my friends now!”

But, as is often the case with my mood, it soon dissolved into angst:

“And the only thing that distracts me is this damn fanfiction and fan art.”

“I will feel SO much better if I can work and not just read pornographic fanfiction (though that is SO tempting).”

And finally:

“I'd like to be writing and reading my fanfiction (feel completely addicted to that - another reason I'm going out of my mind) but there's no space to do that and I'm completely claustrophobic.”

Yes. I started to write some of my own. Even thought I’d told a friend I’d NEVER start writing fanfiction, because I was afraid that if I started, I wouldn’t write anything else ever again.

It was also having a slight detriment on my own sex life. Here are some more of my notes:

“Decided I need to read some F/F fanfiction...”

“When I need a break it's okay to read some fanfiction and retreat into my fantasies. Try to find some good femslash ones, too…”

Because my wife wasn’t a fanfiction fan. Turned out, though, I wasn’t a fan of femslash. Maybe because I like John and Sherlock the way they are; maybe because, as I said to that same friend, “Porn is better with penises.”

So I wrote a book. It’s M/F and F/F, and made me happier again with my own femslash life. And another, satirical one, about a mid-life crisis.

Thanks for reading! xo Bret Harper


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